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Testimony of GEORGE BEALL United States Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs

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Testimony of GEORGE BEALL United States Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs Testimony of GEORGE BEALL United States Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs March 3, 1999 Mr. Chairman and Senators: As the son of one former U. S. Senator from Maryland and brother of another it is a personal privilege for me to appear today. My contribution to your deliberations will be more anecdotal than analytical since I am here as a former federal prosecutor and not one who has served as an independent counsel. The threshold premise for the independent counsel statute in 1977 was that the Department of Justice could not impartially investigate and, if necessary, prosecute highly placed officials in the Executive Branch who commit federal crimes.1/ The investigation of former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew in 1973 is a noteworthy case study of how the Department of Justice--and not a special or independent prosecutor--can discharge its law enforcement responsibility in the context of a politically sensitive criminal matter. As United States Attorney for Maryland I was the prosecutor responsible for initiating and then conducting this investigation. I was a Republican appointee of a Republican President and Vice President, the latter who was from my home state. In short, I worked for the same Executive Branch as they and our Attorney General. Consequently, when Vice President Agnew entered a plea of no contest to tax felony charges and received a monetary fine, probation and no term of imprisonment in return for resignation from his office and we placed on the court record a 40-page summary of the proof of his criminal misconduct, the country was shown that our Executive Branch could prosecute its own officials without the necessity for enlistment of an independent counsel. With a staff of Assistant United States Attorneys in Baltimore, Agents of the Internal Revenue Service and a federal grand jury, all working under the personal direction of Attorney General Elliot T. Richardson, the Agnew investigation was significant confirmation of our principle of neutrality; that is, that no citizen is above or below the law including the second highest elected public official in our Republic. Significantly, Attorney General Richardson decided, on my office’s recommendation, that the Department of Justice should retain jurisdiction over the Agnew investigation and not refer the inquiry to the special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. Mr. Cox had been nominated as the Special Watergate Prosecutor to pursue a wide- ranging investigation of the President and others on May 18, 1973. Mr. Richardson replaced Richard Kleindienst as Attorney General of the United States on May 25, 1973. He inherited a Department of Justice which was demoralized--perhaps even humiliated--because the Watergate investigation had been taken away and assigned to a special prosecutor. So it was that, as Mr. Richardson moved from Secretary of Defense to become Attorney General, his mission was said by him to restore integrity and credibility to the Justice Department: "To a large extent . [the American people’s] respect for government is affected by the fairness and integrity of the law-enforcement process. I think there is an opportunity to restore confidence [by] finding ways in which the law-enforcement process can be made to be, and perceived to be, scrupulous in the ways in which it carries out its job." What Mr. Richardson did not know as he delivered that statement on his arrival at Justice was that the Office of the United States Attorney for Maryland was assembling an array of witnesses, documents and hard evidence confirming that Mr. Agnew had received from a number of intermediaries kickbacks of 5% on public engineering and architectural contracts during his tenure as Governor of Maryland from 1966 to 1968 and that, thereafter, he had accepted a cash payment of $10,000 that was delivered to him in his temporary office in the basement of the White House by one of those engineers in January, 1969. When I had informed his predecessor, Mr. Kleindeinst, of the Baltimore probe as he was resigning in May, 1973, he had encouraged me to "do what I had to do" and emphasized that I should brief the new Attorney General at the earliest opportunity. My first meeting with Attorney General Richardson on June 12th was, needless-to- say, very dramatic. Naturally, I seized the opportunity to brief my new boss on our expanding Baltimore investigation of the Vice President. The Attorney General, confronted with the increasing vulnerability of President Nixon to the Watergate entanglement, responded with remarkable equanimity. Mr. Richardson began by relating an experience he had as Republican U. S. Attorney in Massachusetts. In 1961 he and his office had initiated a kickback inquiry involving highway contractors and the Governor, a Democrat. After the 1960 national election, when he asked the new Attorney General, Robert F. Kennedy, for permission to stay in the job to complete the investigation, his request was denied. Naturally, this political corruption matter was a casualty of the political transition and was not pursued, something Mr. Richardson found unsatisfactory. To me his reaction and this meeting were most heartening. From the outset the new head of the Department of Justice demonstrated that he understood the predicate for our Maryland investigation. Further, he confirmed that principle mattered more than politics in federal criminal law enforcement, a sentiment I shared. Finally, he chose to meet me alone, without aides or Justice Department staff, and said he would personally oversee my investigation, inviting me to "keep in touch" with him as we parted. He, the Attorney General, took charge immediately. At our next meeting on July 3 the Attorney General had an opportunity to meet the three Assistants from my Baltimore office2/ who were conducting the Maryland political corruption investigation. After considerable delay I, by prearrangement, proceeded with lengthy introductions of our obviously young team of prosecutors--I was the oldest at 36--emphasizing their Harvard backgrounds for Mr. Richardson’s absorption. Before I could get to the point of elaborating the considerable evidence that had been accumulated against Mr. Agnew since my earlier briefing, his secretary handed him a note and he excused himself. No sooner had he returned then he was handed another note and left again. After another significant delay he returned to the conference room and said he owed us an explanation as to why he kept leaving the room. He said something to the effect that "the President’s a little upset with Mr. Cox today," referring to a morning newspaper story that the special Watergate prosecutor was investigating the President’s real estate transactions including, particularly, his home in San Clemente, California. He assured us that only calls from President Nixon had priority over our discussion. Then he began articulating the big issues: • What would be the effect of the Agnew case on the capacity of the administration to govern? • Should Mr. Agnew be confronted immediately with the evidence against him? • Would the Vice President resign or would he contest the charges? • Would the principal witnesses against the Vice President be offered immunity? (They were not--each agreed to plead guilty to at least one felony in return for their cooperation.) • When should President Nixon be told? By the time the three-hour meeting ended, Mr. Richardson had decided that, while it was imperative that the President learn of the investigation at the earliest possible time, the problems attendant to Watergate and the remote possibility that the witnesses against Mr. Agnew might not stand up to intense inquisition, persuaded him to delay telling the President. Again, the meeting was between my staff and Mr. Richardson, with no "career" Justice personnel present. Encouraged as we Baltimore prosecutors were with the Attorney General’s thoroughly responsible, determined and supportive reaction, the possibility that this investigation could, arguably, come under the jurisdiction of Special Prosecutor Cox had to be confronted. At a follow-up meeting with the Attorney General on July 11th this issue was addressed at length. Mr. Richardson reminded us that in his confirmation hearings, appointment of a special Watergate prosecutor had been a subject of discussion and certain Senators had pointed out that there would be an appearance of impropriety if an Attorney General appointed by the President also conducted the Watergate investigation. Mr. Richardson had acknowledged to the Senate that it was valid to be concerned about how the public perceived the Watergate investigation and that, therefore, it was justifiable and necessary that a special prosecutor be appointed for that matter.3/ He then told us that in the case of Mr. Agnew the same sensitivity to appearances of a conflict of interest could be raised in support of an argument for referring it to Mr. Cox. I said to the Attorney General that, because one of his stated objectives had been restoration of public confidence in the Department of Justice in the wake of Watergate, Mr. Kleindeinst’s resignation and other events, the Agnew case offered a timely opportunity for us to demonstrate that the Department had the will, ability and capacity to vigorously enforce the criminal law, even as it involved the Vice President of the United States. I argued that my office could be fair to Mr. Agnew and could accelerate the investigation’s pace, while remaining thorough. He agreed and the subject never arose again.4/ By the time news of the Agnew investigation broke in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, August 7, the investigation we began three months earlier was essentially complete. When Mr. Richardson met with President Nixon that same day, he was asked by the President to meet personally with Mr. Agnew to provide a summary of the status of the investigation in Baltimore.
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